Category: Albums

Elvie Shane, Damascus (self-released)

Generally organic feel and great production propel this blue-collar hero’s twangy and slashy tuneage. He’s also something of a preacher, so he comes to the countrified Springsteen pace with the right credentials, which has taken him pretty far to date, with love coming his way from Rolling Stone and a formidable group of other press outlets. This stuff is undoubtedly bad-ass, beginning with album opener “Outside Dog,” a tune that evokes Jerry Lee Lewis fronting Butthole Surfers; the vibe is swampy and muddy and broke-down, and the bullhorn patch on Shane’s voice is just, you know, chef’s kiss. “What Do I Know” is a more Bob Dylan-infused joint, a hardscrabble working person’s call for clarity while trying to thrive in our impossible era of forced economic austerity: “I’m just hard-working beer-drinkin’ son of an average Joe.” The honesty is magma deep here; this isn’t some former trust-fund kid who got cut off for dropping out of university. A+

Julien Knowles, As Many, As One (Biophilia Records)

Knowles is a Los Angeles-based trumpeter and composer, said to be one of the most sought-after musicians on the L.A. jazz scene; most recently he’s been heard on such albums as Anthony Wilson’s Collodion, Peter Epstein’s Two Legs Bad and Louis Cole’s Some Unused Songs. This full-length kicks off with the impossibly dreamy “Opening,” fronting enough background noise to sound vastly different from most bands that try to summon Do The Right Thing’s urban background-at-night steez. It picks up in a startlingly tight-sounding manner, with Javier Santiago’s piano laying down a bonking pattern that feels like a raft ride down the rapids. I should mention that there are nine musicians involved, which does make everything sound thick and full; Knowles’s crazy-busy trumpet seems relegated to the back of the mix, with the piano (there are two guys handling that) situated in front, in first-person stereo view. Definitely proggy but it all goes down very smooth. A+

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Yay, it’s the May 3 crop of new musical CD releases, for your listening dysphoria! You know something, fam, for the last few years I’ve been pretty much oblivious to all the goings-on with the lilting soprano nymphettes that are always singing about depraved sexual acts on corporate kiddie-pop radio stations — wait, do the kids even know what a radio is anymore? Are there radios anymore? What does the school bus driver play over the $3 loudspeakers nowadays on the way to bringing all the kids to school to give their parents a break from having to listen to them yammer on about hip-hop beefs and gender-neutral dialectical materialism these days, or does the bus ride into school with everyone listening to crunk and black metal in their earbuds? You know, just to find out how kids live nowadays, I am publicly volunteering to work for the cops undercover in a school, like on 21 Jump Street, all I’d need to do is dye the gray out of my hair with a ton of Revlon ColorSilk No. 231 or whatnot and lose 20 pounds and get a face lift and before you know it those little rascals would be all up in my business, asking me where to score some sour Trolli jelly worm candies and how to talk to girls, as if I’d know, and I’d just make up stuff and get them in trouble. Why do I bring up this idiocy? Well, because it’s time for me to stop pretending that Dua Lipa doesn’t exist, given that she has a new album out this Friday, there’s no escape for me this time. Can you tell I’d rather be talking about literally anything on Earth other than Dua Lipa? You know me so well, guys, but let’s do the dutiful and go listen to this soon-to-be-forgotten flash in the pan’s latest single, “Bet You Like The Fact That My Butt Is Bigger Than The Entire State Of Kansas!” Wait, no, that’s not whatsername, that was from some journalistic writing notes I made while preparing to see how long my barf-reflex would hold out while investigating the new album, Radical Optimism, and its single, “Illusion.” Yikes, it actually isn’t bad, very 2006 disco-house, it’s a lot better than Taylor Swift and all those other people, I guess.

• London, U.K.’s favorite electronic afro-funk band (or at least one of them), Ibibio Sound Machine, is at it again, with a new full-length, Pull The Rope! The title track features a laid-back, pretty nifty rubber-band groove that goes on forever. Not much else happens, but maybe it’ll backdrop a Geek Squad commercial someday and they can tell their grandkids about it.

• You’re kidding. It’s horror director/Casio keyboard enthusiast John Carpenter, with yet another album of themes that didn’t make it into one of his movies (or whatever the deal is), Lost Themes IV: Noir. “My Name Is Death” is pretty advanced for what he usually does. OK, no it’s not, it’s the same sort of thing as the incidental music from his 1978 movie Halloween, but the explodey synths, well, they’re pretty explodey!

• Lastly it’s Long Island-based indie rockers The Lemon Twigs, with A Dream Is All We Know! The single, “A Dream Is All I Know,” totally sounds like “really bad” era Paul McCartney, when he did “Wonderful Christmastime.” I don’t love it.

Gryphon Rue, 4n_Objx (self-released)

Traditionally, my desk has been a dumping ground for noise and avant releases of all types, which I’ve never minded; the only thing that gets on my nerves is impromptu jazz that uses badly matched acoustic instruments, like, say, a fiddle with a clarinet. I mention all that merely as preface for this, which is decidedly not acoustic at all; in fact it’s a very techy and quite accessible blend of electroacoustic, field recordings, tropicalia psych and krautrock. There’s an underwater, deeply textural feel to all the contents, which unexpectedly shift into bizarre royal-trumpet parts like the soundtrack from The Cell (the J-Lo one I mean) and then gradually move back to more aquatic, graceful spaces. Rue is a New York City kid, and this isn’t his first LP; I’m sure he’ll be a soundtrack force in future. I almost hate to call it experimental, since that tends to scare people off, but yeah, these are doodlings, but high-end ones. A+

—Eric W. Saeger

Caldwell, Caldwell (Popclaw/Rise Above Records)

New Orleans-based rocker Kevan Caldwell is a member of The Planchettes, which probably doesn’t mean anything to you, but you should check them out, because they were like a ’60s garage/horror rock New York Dolls, like, if three subway rats formed a band and got booted out of every place they played, they would have sounded like The Planchettes. This dude is sort of a chicken-fried Nick Cave, evident from the wah-pedal groove of opener “No Flowers Today” and the breezy, acoustic-fronted pop idealism of “Love Confessions,” to the tripped-out nursery rhyme strut of “Picturesque Self Portrait,” this is an album of endless curveballs, one that any psychedelic garage lover should consider investigating. He was big into the Kinks at the time of writing this LP (Covid lockdowns informed it as well), so it’s a peek into this guy’s soul, which seems to be a welcoming place. A —Eric W. Saeger

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Just like every other Friday, we’ll see a relentless storm of new CDs on April 26, can you hardly even wait or what, folks? Like every week, I’m about to look at my super-secret list of new CDs, a list that only professional music journalists can see at metacritic.com, after I’m done whispering prayers to Odin that every CD on the list won’t be annoying. Wait, we have a nice start for once, with a new Pet Shop Boys album, called Nonetheless! Over the years, Pet Shop Boys have become a secret, guilty pleasure for people who don’t like all the really bad music that’s been put out for decades now (OK, fine, maybe they aren’t so secret, given that they were listed as the most successful duo in U.K. music history in the 1999 edition of The Guinness Book of Records, can you just not argue with me for once, that’d be great) and prefer music that makes them feel good, not that they started out that way. Like, their first hit single in the ’80s, “West End Girls,” used to get on my nerves and make me think of creepy incels, but 15 years ago their PR person sent me a copy of their album Yes, and I was all like, “Wait, when did these guys become the greatest duo in U.K. music history?” But putting that aside, all I can hope is that their newest single, “Loneliness,” is unequivocally awesome, so that I can make fun of myself again for being so wrong about this successful U.K. duo! Oh darn it all, it’s awesome, a really mellow krautrock-infused thing with a rubber-band beat and way-toned-down vocals, excuse me while I’m once again forced to recite 50 “Hail Odins.”

• Wolfgang Tillmans is a really famous photographer from Germany, which somehow led to his believing that he’s also a musician, and so he has done Music Stuff, including having one of his tracks sampled by Frank Ocean on his video album Endless. Yes, there is much postmodernism going on here, which is annoying to people like Jordan Peterson but enticing to others who are art-challenged. I cannot choose, so I’m going to let Tillmans’ music do the talking and listen to “Here We Are,” which is apparently included in Tillmans’ new album, Build From Here. OK, it starts out annoying, with a droopy krautrock intro synth-line that drags on forever, and then it becomes a David Bowie thing. Boring. Oh wait, here’s another tune that’s on the album, called “Where Does The Tune Hide,” and Tillmans sings on it. Ack, gross, it’s like Haujobb (if you even know them) but it’s super stupid, a bunch of pretentious New Age nonsense. This is not my favorite record of all time.

• Lol, I remember way back in the mid-2010s, when bands were giving themselves names that had two V’s in them, do any of you people even remember that doomed little mini-trend, like Wavves? Well, I’m here to report that there is a new band that does that, called Hovvdy, whose self-titled album is here, for my expert examination, get on my doctor table, little album, and let’s have a look at ya. Hm, the doctor chart here says they’re an American indie-pop duo from Austin, Texas, I’ll bet it sounds like Guster, let’s go check out the single, “Forever.” Yup, ding ding ding, it sounds like Guster but with a little Vampire Weekend syncopation but not enough to register an actual pulse. Holy cats, folks, let’s wrap this week up.

• Lastly we have famous French tech-house producer duo Justice, with their newest album, Hyperdrama! You remember these guys, with their asphalt-grating Ed Banger sound that’s gone the way of the McDLT, but the new single is “Generator,” made of typical edgy noise-electro, like soundtrack music for a live-action Pokemon movie, so nothing’s changed. They’re coming to the MGM Music Hall in Boston on Aug. 2. —Eric W. Saeger

Chris Patrick, The Calm (self-released)

Reflective nine-track project from the New Jersey-born rapper, in which he pays homage to the authentic spirit of the mixtape era, with touchstones that include T-Pain, Earthgang, JID, Smino, and Isaiah Rashad. It sure sounds underground in comparison to today’s corporate hip-hop, and more realistic, too. Patrick spent the first half of 2023 in a really bad place; after losing most of his friends he found himself financially strapped, something most emcees would never cop to, you know how it goes, but his buddy Gutty sent him the desolate piano-driven beat for this mix’s closing track, “The Calm,” at which point this project took off. The tune itself is as real as these things get, inspiring and self-reflective, which was the whole point of this exercise. “Da Beam” is particularly cool, some low-end rubber-band-plucking tabling what feels like a dub/dancehall vibe for the ages. It’s not often you hear something so friendly yet distant in this genre. A+

Camera Obscura, Look to the East, Look to the West (Merge Records)

As you’d probably guess, I was never a big twee fan, or at least its biggest doe-eyed touchstones (Belle & Sebastian is what I mean of course, who recently did a set of cruise-ship shows with the fellow Scots in this band). I didn’t consider this crew to be overly twee and actually quite liked their way with reverb; there was a Cure angle to the beats, and who hates that? This one starts off annoyingly enough, though, with leader/singer Tracyanne Campbell tabling some harmless warbling over what basically amounts to a Postal Service afterthought. Funnily enough, this LP was recorded in the same room where Queen wrote “Bohemian Rhapsody,” which led me to suspect that there’d be more and bigger string and brass sounds and reverb so thick you could cut it with a chainsaw. But no, none of those things are here. The lead single, “Big Love,” reads like Natalie Merchant gone completely cowboy-hat, while “The Light Nights” evokes square-dancing and mimosas. It’s all a bit nauseating to me really. C

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Our next Friday-full of CD releases is April 19, isn’t that the greatest? The first thing to come up is a discussion we’ve had before in these pages: Which is the signature band of the ’90s, the Red Hot Chili Peppers or Pearl Jam? I suppose the answer comes down to taste (oh, and forgetting to include Nirvana), but in my mind I associate the ’90s with grunge, that borderline-metal genre that tried to sound dark and important, which definitely leaves out the Peppers, a band I never really liked, mostly because they sounded too happy and content. This is all something we need to consider, of course, given that the ’90s are starting to come back with a vengeance (the ’80s are so 2015 these days, wouldn’t you say?), and wouldn’t you know it, Pearl Jam has a new album coming out on Friday, titled Dark Matter! It’ll be interesting to see if there are any lead guitar lines on this one; during grunge’s heydey, Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain called Pearl Jam a bunch of sellouts for having lead guitar parts on their albums, which was one reason I didn’t take Cobain very seriously, but whatever, why don’t I go listen to the title track from this album, yes, let’s. Well listen to that, it kind of sounds like Black Sabbath, but Eddie Vedder is singing on it, which automatically means that it’s too lyrically deep to be Black Sabbath-ish. But wow, this is pretty heavy indeed, and then suddenly it becomes Pearl-Jammy, with a throwaway bridge part that would have been expected on those old Sub Pop records when these guys were basically hopeless, but here it’s just kind of gimmicky. But mind you, I’ve only listened to it once, so maybe it grows on you, not that I’ll bother listening to it again of my own volition.

• Oh no, no, no, it’s Taylor Swift, with her new album, The Tortured Poets Department, will it ever end? Please lord, let there be something on this album that doesn’t force me to scramble for a “RIYL” reference to tell you guys what it sounds like, that’d be great. When last we left TayTay, she’d won the universe by winning some Grammys the same week her boyfriend Buster Magoo or whatever won that totally fixed Super Bowl by yelling at his coach like a feral lummox. Oh, I can’t riff on this much longer, all I really have to say about Tay is that her producers write all her Britney Spears-like hits because she can only write songs that sound like Jewel, and that’s all fine by me, who cares what I think, I promise not to start another 200-reply thread on Facebook just so people can yell at each other, despite how much fun it is. Alright, let’s get to the doings, I’ll just check out “Lavender Haze,” because it’s the first song on the album, it looks like. Eh, it’s OK, hip-hop-tinged afterparty vibe reminiscent of Alicia Keys and TLC, weren’t we just talking about a ’90s resurgence? She uses the S word a lot in this children’s song, should I even mention that?

• Roots-rock-blues-whatever musician T Bone Burnett is back with his first studio album in 20 years, The Other Side! You may recall that Burnett seemed to be under every rock you overturned a few years ago, producing famous albums and stuff, but here he is, leading a band again. The first single, “Waiting For You,” is a cross between Bon Iver and Simon & Garfunkel, mellow and bummerish and nicely done.

• Lastly it’s the Melvins, the mud-metal band that used to have Shirley Temple’s daughter on bass, with their newest full-length LP, Tarantula Heart. “Working The Ditch” is a really cool song from this album, featuring severely down-turned guitars and an attitude reminiscent of early Ministry. Who could hate that?

Kartell, Everything Is Here (Roche Musique)

Debut LP from this French producer, who broke through in 2012 owing to his distinctly accessible electronic tuneage, which is possessed of warmth, soul and melancholia. The background is that he grew up as a lad listening to his dad’s soul, disco and early house collection, and his early stuff led to a residency at Paris’ velvet-rope Social Club and getting booked globally at all the ritzy places from California to South Korea. Opening track “Space Odyssey” is clamorous and epic, along the lines of M83 when it gets going at around the midpoint; it immediately proves he takes a lot of time cobbling his low-BPM compositions (yes, we need more of that in this world). We also have “Quest,” a disco/LMFAO-inspired afterparty joint featuring St. Lucia artist Poté that’s not near as annoying as it might look on paper. It’s no wonder this guy’s doing so well; this stuff is custom-engineered to fill floors with idle trust-funders. A+

Aves, Transformations (Kieku Records)

Retro futurism-informed album from this three-piece Helsinki, Finland-based outfit, its lyrics encompassing “all change; from man to woman, from adolescence to adulthood, from grief to hope.” Lot of dreamy synth pop goes on here, starting with “Silent Solitude,” a meditative, loop-filled ride built around a cloudy, barely discernible vocal that’ll make some listeners think of Sigur Rós (appropriate, given that all the contributors here — including Icelandic artist JFDR and Danish singer Lydmor — obviously cut their teeth on Nordic pop and adjacent genres); it’s a melancholy, sexless but expansively hopeful thingamajig that’d fit in fine on a neo-hippie coming-of-age film (they’re in talks to write the soundtrack for a film about conversion therapy, while we’re at it). The next song, “Gem Of The Ocean,” starts with the same sort of deep-reverb breathiness as the previous one but then takes a more in-your-face tack, the super-pretty vocal sounding more digitally present. More of this, please. A+

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Yikes, Friday, April 12, looks to be a real humdinger of a day for new albums, look at ’em all, folks. Yep, we’re gearin’ up for a hot summer of singles from bubblegum Taylor Swift wannabes, corporate hip-hop bros, disposable indie bands and of course heavy metal bands, because metal never rests, unless it gets too hot to wear suits of armor or whatever they’re doing now! But wait, it’s storytime, because look who has a new album coming out, that’s right, it’s New York City’s perennial arena-band-opening act Blue Öyster Cult, with a new “slab” called Ghost Stories! Yes, the band that gave us the unlistenable dentist-office classic tune “Burnin’ For You” is at it again, and for that I thank them, because they should be out and about making more albums that only five people buy, because they are fun-loving rascals! Years ago I was at some outdoor show in Loudon, New Hampshire, or whatever, where they were opening for Savoy Brown, and my date and I were standing around with the keyboard player and the drummer while some wicked-long-haired dude was trying to sell them a bag of herbs that he claimed would “bring their youth back.” Anyway, Eric Bloom — the guy with the cool voice who sang “Black Blade” and whatnot — comes walking up, grabs the bag and keeps going without paying this feller, and I started cracking up because I knew the guy wasn’t ever going to get paid for his bag of snake-oil lawn clippings or whatever they were. But anyway, I love the BÖC, even though they’ve done some really dumb songs, so I hope this album is totally rockin’, like they say. Ack, oh noes, the opening tune, “Don’t Come Running To Me,” is just a mellow version of “Don’t Fear The Reaper,” their big hit from a hundred years ago when Abraham Lincoln was president. I’m just glad I didn’t have my hopes up.

• Ugh, what else do we have, hopefully something fun, eh wot? Yikes, Bob’s your uncle, it’s that British sax player dude, Shabaka, of Shabaka and the Ancestors! He was in avant-Afrobeat quartet Sons of Kemet and jazz-tronica band The Comet Is Coming, none of which probably means anything to you, but he is an interesting music human, this feller. His debut solo album, Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace, is out this week, and it is said to highlight his mad skills on such flute-related instruments as the Mayan Teotihuacan drone flute, Brazilian piano, Native American flute and South American quenas. Do you know what this means? I do not, but I’m going to listen to this balderdash right now, because anything’s better than a new Britney Spears album or whatever other horrors are in store this year! Hm, this is actually interesting, the single, “I’ll Do Whatever You Want.” It’s got an early techno vibe to it, some krautrock feel, sort of forlorn and underproduced like Daedelus, and whichever type of flute he’s playing does lend a soothing feel to it.

• Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard is from Cardiff in the U.K., and their newest is titled Skinwalker. Frontman/ and producer Tom Rees says the album is his attempt at “consolidating my 2020 obsession with Sly and the Family Stone with my 2021 obsession with David Bowie’s album Low,” so let’s see how that all panned out, that’d be great. OK, the single, “National Rust,” is a cross between Pavement and ’90s grunge, which, turns out, is a workable recipe. Lazy indie rock for sitting around while unemployed, that’s my take.

• Lastly we have another Englishperson, jungle/drum and bass singer/DJ Nia Archives, with Silence Is Loud. The title track is a rinseout, all right, with some from-the-mountaintop vocals and plenty of melody. I don’t mind this at all.

Altin Sencalar, Discover The Present (Posi-Tone Records)

This jazz leader and his long-time co-trombonist Chris Glassman have been hailed by such major zines as Stereophile, who said they sound like “21st century grandchildren of JJ Johnson and Kai Winding.” That’ll mean very little to folks who aren’t big in trombone-jazz, of course, aside from the obvious, they’ve got a nice setup going on here. There are Latin and Vegas edges to this stuff, most eminently in a cover of Four Tops’ 1970s radio-hit “Ain’t No Woman Like the One I’ve Got,” which is jaw-droppingly clean on the production end. The proverbial fourth wall has been all but obliterated in the Big Tech era; any search for Sencalar brings up his LinkedIn page first and foremost, which kind of struck me funny; it enumerates all the colleges where he’s taught, including some in Japan. That left me with the impression I’d be hearing rote academic renditions of this stuff aimed at a particular niche, but the exuberance is really inspiring throughout. A+ —Eric W. Saeger

The Legless Crabs, “Golden Bachelor” / “Get Down” (Metal Postcard Records)

Meanwhile, somewhere on Alpha Centauri, there are bands that, like Pepperidge Farm, remember. In the case of this band, what’s remembered is the Butthole Surfers, a band I’d bet 99 percent of you folks have heard of but only 0.01 percent have actually listened to. Now, Metal Postcard seems to be something of a prank record label, given that they charge random prices for their records, like, one was $22,890, and you can purchase this band’s entire discography for $264.67 (or just the two-sided single for $2). Boy, that’s some nerve, but these guys are such full-of-baloney popinjays (sample press quote: “If the Legless Crabs had released music in the ’60s they would have been rediscovered in the ’80s and fawned over”) that I can’t think of anything bad to say about them. But yes, these tunes do sound like the Surfers: slow, messy, distorted beats and bullhorned vocals, do you need anything else? Of course you don’t. A+ —Eric W. Saeger

_PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Friday is April 5, and it will mark another Friday of albums for your listening displeasure and whatnot! You know what band we haven’t talked about in a long time is Vampire Weekend, remember them, you guys? They were like a cross between Ben Folds and Paul Simon, doing yacht rock for flat-broke millennials who lived with their parents. How did they ever get so big? No, I’m asking you, how did that band ever happen? OK, fine, the polyrhythms were borderline interesting, if you’re new to this planet and had never heard people playing, you know, drums before, or something? Lyrically, they’re sort of edgy, offering “a dynamic blend between the secular and the religious,” which means zip if you don’t care about lyrics, but you know what else, Barack Obama sought their support for his 2012 re-election campaign, and since they believed that politicians actually had a say in what happens in this country, they gladly accepted. But anyway, they had legitimacy during that mercifully short Aughts era when everyone hated music and was getting their revenge by listening to this band and so many others, so what have they gone and done but recorded a new album! This one, which only came out a few hours ago, is titled Only God Was Above Us.

• For some reason — probably because I don’t really care about either of them all that much — I’m always confusing the Black Lips with The Black Keys, whose new album, Ohio Players, is on the way! No, kidding, I do like how the Lips behave like demented punk rockers, and they can be sort of cool, don’t get me wrong. The Keys, though, I thought that was just a summer thing with the skinny jeans crowd, but it did last, Gawd bless ’em, so, on the occasion of this new album, it’s time once again to try to tell them from Arctic Monkeys or Strokes or whatnot (I never could, Gawd bless ya if you can). Lol, the Black Keys subreddit has some bad reviews of this thing, never mind the stupid kiss-butt bot that pops in to say “Myeahhh, I hope this means they’ll be spending time in Ohio!” Good grief, get me out of this subreddit, why am I even doing this, let’s go listen to one of the new songs, “I Forgot To Be Your Lover.” Ack, they’re trying to be Sam Cooke, or maybe — wait, I get it now — the Ohio Players in ballad mode! Boy, I’ll tell you, I have no use for this at all, but if you’re big into hookless tuneage, go for it.

• Wait, I thought Old 97’s were all done being mean to music, but if so, why am I seeing a new album called American Primitive being released by them this week? Wait, no, forget it, Rhett Miller is still their singer, I’d gotten confused because he was doing solo albums for a few years there and had kind of dumped them, not that I was keeping track. “Where The Road Goes” sounds like something Willie Nelson should be singing, not someone who isn’t 100 years old. It isn’t a very interesting song, is writing interesting songs even part of the typical game plan for bands nowadays? Discuss.

• We’ll end this remarkably uninteresting week of new albums with Phosphorescent’s new one, Revelator. Phosphorescent is the stage name of American indie singer-songwriter Matthew Houck, who is originally from Alabama but now lives in Athens, Georgia, so people will think he’s cool or whatever. The title track has mellow, strummy acoustic guitar, and there’s Spacemen 3 reverb on Houck’s voice, which is pretty much the only thing that’s keeping me from falling asleep while it’s playing. He sounds like a bad karaoke version of José González. What on Earth possesses people to support artists like this, seriously? —Eric W. Saeger

Warlord, Free Spirit Soar (High Roller Records)

Ha ha, I owned a Warlord album once when I was a young heavy metal incel, but I only listened to it maybe three times because it wasn’t all that good, sort of like a cross between Anvil and, I don’t know, maybe Scorpions I guess. Singer Bill Tsamis died in 2021, but original drummer and co-founder Mark Zonder is here.

The promo sheet on this one claims that this U.S. band was an early epic-metal band. Funny it should say that, because album-opener “Behold a Pale Horse” is definitely epic-metal. It has caveman-ren-faire drums a la Corvus Corax, and the singer is really serious, singing about witch-kings and prophets or something. Yeah, no, this stuff has a Savatage bend to it. “Conquerors” is street-metal in the vein of Riot, except the dude’s singing about giant cyclops or something. A

Marc Valentine, Basement Sparks (Wicked Cool Records)

This guy, whom Vive Le Rock magazine anointed as “the new king of British power-pop,” qualifies for that “prize” I suppose, for what it’s worth. This is the follow-up full-length to his debut album from last year, and he comes storming out of the gate on this one, with the They Might Be Giants-like “Complicated Sometimes,” which breaks the emo mold a bit by using a Mister Roboto effect on his voice (you never hear that anymore, not that anyone cares). The overall vibe tenders a cross between Dashboard Confessional and a slightly cartoonish version of eastern European grog-punk bands like Korpiklaani, which means the listener is in for a fun ride (I never understood how people could take “power pop” bands seriously, so it’s refreshing to note that this guy takes a lot of his cues from 1970s glam bands). Speaking of Marc Bolan, the tune “Tyrranical Wrecks” is a ton of fun, with Valentine trying on-the-phone patch on for size. I hope this guy breaks big. A+

Playlist

• Uh-oh, Friday, March 29, is a big day, because it is the last CD release day of our Antarctican winter, meaning that spring is definitely here! Sheryl Crow’s new album, Evolution, is the first one we will laugh look at today; you all remember Crow from her multi-platinum-whatever soccer mom hits, but did you know that she contributed her singing talents to William Shatner’s 2011 joke album, Seeking Major Tom, covering the song “Seeking Major Tom” originally rendered on the K.I.A. album Adieu Shinjuku Zulu, did you even know that? Of course not, who would, but this new one is her 12th album and features the single “Digging in the Dirt,” featuring Peter Gabriel, whom we discussed in this award-winning column just a few weeks ago. He originally released the song (which won the Best Video Grammy) in his 1992 studio album Us. How will Sheryl Crow improve on this song? Will she even try to? Let me go to the YouTube and listen to it, so you don’t have to. OK, it’s basically the same thing except with Sheryl Crow singing all the lines, like, “This time you’ve gone too far” and all that stuff, and every once in a while Gabriel pops in like Punxsutawney Phil the groundhog in order to ensure that it’s as boring as the original. This is a very clever marketing strategy, I have to admit.

• Slovenly chamber-pop singer and Libertines hanger-on Ed Harcourt is back with a new album, called El Magnifico, please stay calm, there will be enough MP3s of this album for all of you to pirate at your favorite pirating website, and no, I have no idea where to find those, because I am an upstanding citizen; now, quiet, you guys, while I try to enjoy the new single, “Deathless,” from this new album. It opens with an indie-folk fractal with some dubstep drums underneath it for some reason, and then it turns into a not-really-bad tune that sounds like Imagine Dragons covering a Conor Oberst B-side. Things could be a lot worse, I suppose, even if the video is really boring, something about standing in a dangerous-looking field of cacti, not that there are any cacti in England, which is where Harcourt is from. And let’s keep moving.

• Brooklyn, N.Y.-based artist Kelly Moran’s music, according to Wikipedia, is a mixture of electronic, jazz, dream pop and black metal, and her record company is Warper Records, which tells me I’m not going to enjoy listening to her new album Moves In The Field at all, not that I’m going into this with a negative attitude or anything of the sort, and besides, she used to play bass for the no-wave punk band Cellular Chaos, so let’s give this LP the benefit of the doubt going in, that’d be great. OK, so the video for the single “Butterfly Phase” features a figure skater interpreting this excitable but sad piano-driven melody, and then it gets sadder and sadder, and all the YouTube commentators are saying they’re crying, and then I started crying myself because I couldn’t understand why a bunch of people were getting emotional over the song, which just sounds like a bummer-piano thing. Maybe they were crying because the figure skater wasn’t doing triple-salchows or pratfalling onto the ice, the latter of which is the only reason people watch figure skating in the first place. I mean, I’m openly sobbing right now.

• Lastly it’s alt-rock band Chastity Belt, from Walla Walla, Washington, and yes, that’s a real place. Live Laugh Love is the all-girl band’s new album, and the single is part folk-indie and part psychedelica. It is gentle and catchy enough; the main verse part is boring, the bridge is OK.